Back to School

Our 11 weeks of summer vacation went quickly. We experienced a lot, we had a lot of fun, and hopefully we made lots of good memories. Here are some pictures from the kids' first day back.

Danielle lost her tooth on Sunday and was very self conscious about her smile at first. I think she looks cute. She thinks it's cool that she can now stick french fries in her mouth without actually opening her mouth. It's the small things, I guess. Her hair looked cute in the back this morning. Guess I should have taken a picture of that, too.

Tyler is a little anxious about this coming year. They've made a big deal out of making it known that 3rd grade is immensely more difficult than anything they've done so far. When you add the extra responsibilities he's going to have with the special program he's in, I think he's feeling a little stressed out. Danielle would be perfectly content with school if she only went 2 or 3 days a week, like last year. Thankfully they won't have a full week of school for another 3 weeks since we're going to Washington DC next week and Labor Day is the following week.

Every year I make a first-day-of-school cake. This year I used Family Fun's plan to make a science flask/beaker. It's supposed to look like a flask with boiling blue liquid in the bottom and bubbles rising to the top, not a polka-dotted volcano. If you think it looks like a volcano, don't tell me. Instead of using FF's idea to use cotton candy as the smoke coming out of the top of the flask, I used a PVC pipe with a sealed cap at one end and dry ice. The cake definitely would not have been the same without the dry ice smoke! Somehow Danielle was out of focus in all my pictures of the 2 of them with the cake. The only problem with this year's cake: I'm not sure how I can top this next year!

Wrapping It Up

We are wrapping up our final week of summer vacation. We finished off the week with a trip to the metropark to catch butterflies & frogs, a trip to the "inflatables place", another trip to the pool, and another trip to the water park. We were too tired to make it to the evening program at the metropark, and it's supposed to rain tomorrow so the balloon festival probably won't happen, but we managed to pack a lot into this week!! I am tired!



Here are a few pictures from this week. I didn't take my camera to the pool on Thursday, and, wouldn't it figure, that's the day Tyler decided to try the high dive. He loved it. I just wish he would have discovered it earlier in the season! My brother went with us to the water park today and took Tyler around to all the water slides.



















































































Now we're looking ahead to school starting. The kids voted to spend their last day at home, so that's what we're doing on Monday. Monday evening the kids get to take their supplies in and meet their teachers, although both kids already know theirs. Afterward, we're looking forward to our annual back-to-school ice cream bash with some of our good neighbor-friends.










This is totally unrelated, but here are a couple more caterpillar pictures. The caterpillars are HUGE! They are now as long as my pinky finger and very fat! The ones we keep inside never get that large. We counted 12 of them the other day. They are so big, I'm sure they will be making their chryalises soon. Hopefully they won't wander too far when they do.






























And...does anyone notice anything wrong with this last picture. It's supposed to be of a hummingbird (not his ghost). You'd think that after 8 months I would have figured out my camera a little better. Oh well. I thought this was kind of funny.

Caterpillars, Kids, & Other Critters

We now have 8-10 caterpillars in our milkweed. This is the first real "crop" of caterpillars we've had naturally since last year's fogging massacre. The monarch mama(s) preferred the young plants and laid most of her eggs there.







































2 of the 8 caterpillars Uncle Ron gave Danielle for her birthday made it all the way to butterfly-hood. We were lucky enough to finally watch one eclose today. I didn't realize the wings were that small when they first eclose! In just a matter of minutes the wings expanded to full size. We let her sit in the sun to dry her wings, and she was flying around a little bit several hours later.



























































Danielle and I are experimenting and trying to "train" our hummingbirds. We are trying to get them to perch on a bowl in our hand. There is one bird, a juvenile male, that seems very comfortable with us. He will eat from the feeder even though we are less than a foot away from it. He almost perched on the bowl the other day - I felt his wing graze my hand. Even if we don't get him to land on it (but we will), it is really neat to get such a close up look at him. These pictures are from when we first started a couple days ago. He gets much closer now.






















One of my cousins got married this weekend. It was cause for the kids to get dressed up, which they enjoy. (I do not.) Aren't they pretty, er, handsome?
























I saw this cicada at the park on Saturday. I didn't realize they were so colorful. His wings look a little tattered, but he was making plenty of noise with them!
























This is our last week of summer vacation. I had the kids make a list of all the things they still wanted to do (or wanted to do again) before going back to school, and we are trying to fit them all in. So far we've gone to the pool and to "Rocketland". We still need to fit in a butterfly/frog catching trip, another trip to the waterpark, a trip to the giant inflatables place, an evening program at the metropark, and a hot air balloon festival. (Some of those were on my list.) The way I figure it, we have just enough time. Have I mentioned how much I dislike school?? It really gets in the way of life!

Coming Home

Today the kids and I joined several others from our town in welcoming home almost 200 members of the Army National Guard as they ended a year tour in Iraq. We were about 15 miles away from their final stop. It was a really neat experience to be there with all those people, all trying to show gratitude for the sacrifices those men and women made. The soldiers were escorted by several sheriff and police officers, and several motorcycles riders (similar to the Patriot Guard). The veterans on the motorcycles were impressive, probably because there were so many of them. Finally the buses came, and everyone waved and cheered. We could see some of the men on the bus, taking it all in, some taking pictures. It was really neat, and emotional, to be part of something like that. Tyler kept talking about how awesome it was as we went home. He was right. It was awesome.



This is the sign Danielle and I made.

Growing Up

Today was Danielle's 7th birthday. I don't know what was so special about this birthday, but she has been talking about it since April! The past couple weeks she was super excited about going to Sweet & Sassy for a little pampering. She is such a girly-girl. After talking to our neighbor who took her daughter there on her birthday, I knew I needed to take Danielle. I'm so glad I did. She LOVED it! Here are a few pictures.























































































She opened her other presents this afternoon. She really wanted an American Girl book called Pom-Pom Pets. It's basically an overpriced craft book, but it is very cute and nicely put together. And I had a coupon for 33% off. She had a lot of fun learning to make pom-poms - even Ron & Tyler joined in the fun. She was really pleased with her pom-pom chick.

















































Danielle also asked for silly string for her birthday because she had so much fun playing with it on the 4th of July. I found some at the $1 store, and the kids enjoyed their silly string war (which is why Danielle did a wardrobe change).


































Other than chocolate, Danielle was very vague about what kind of cake she wanted this year. I found plans for this horse and thought it looked easy enough to make. I feared it looked more like the Democrat donkey while I was putting it together, but adding the mane made her look more horselike. (Danielle said it's a girl since it has eyelashes.) I think Danielle liked it, although she didn't really say much. Tyler thought it was pretty cool when he snuck a peek last night.




















Earlier this week Tyler "accidentally" bopped Danielle in the mouth, significantly loosening an already loose front tooth. Now it's just hanging by one side and sticks out kind of funny. She thinks she looks like a witch, but it didn't stop her from grinning most of the day today. And even with that snaggletooth, I think she's the most beautiful - inside & out - 7 year old I know.

This and That

We have been really busy lately! We have less than 3 weeks left until school starts, so I think maybe I've been trying to cram all the fun we can into what's left of summer.



Since my last post we visited the zoo.


















































I turned another year older. After dinner on my birthday, we went for a walk at the park while the sun set. We saw lots of critters - birds, frogs, deer, butterflies. It was fun.





























We released our butterfly. My brother brought Danielle an early birthday present - 8 monarch caterpillars. They were all in different stages, which was neat. If you look closely at the first picture, you can see he just molted. His head capsule is by his legs and his skin is all bunched up in the back. In the last butterfly picture the caterpillar is still making his chrysalis. Danielle finally got to watch a caterpillar make its chrysalis. We did have a couple die. One had a fly egg inside it and died when the larva came out. It was absolutely disgusting. We have 2 in their chrysalises and 2 that are still munching away. The caterpillar that hatched from the egg we found on our own plants is still growing and doing well, too.






























































We went to the fair.




































































We went to the water park.




















































































We toured a popcorn "factory". Danielle brought a couple friends with her. We also went to lunch and then to a park. The first park was too boring, so we went to a school playground. Once we got to the playground, the kids decided they needed to use the restroom. Nothing was close except a fire station just down the road. The kind firemen let us in, allowed the kids to use the restroom, and then gave the kids a tour. Afterward we went back to the playground for a little while longer.







































As you might guess, I haven't cleaned the house and have barely kept up with laundry, but we've had a lot of fun! I'll have plenty of time to clean the house in about 3 weeks.